October 2012 and the labels were back for more, this time asking six ISPs (BT, Sky, Virgin Media, O2, EE and TalkTalk) to begin blocking three more leading BitTorrent sites under Section 97A of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act.

None of the ISPs offered to voluntarily block the sites without a court order, but none of them expressed a willingness to contest the industry’s demands either. This meant that the inevitable court hearing would be a streamlined affair resulting in success for the music industry. A little while ago that came to pass.

This morning the High Court in London ordered the country’s leading Internet service providers to begin blocking Kickass Torrents, H33T and Fenopy, a decision welcomed by the BPI.

“The growth of digital music in the UK is held back by a raft of illegal businesses commercially exploiting music online without permission,” said chief executive Geoff Taylor.

“Blocking illegal sites helps ensure that the legal digital market can grow and labels can continue to sign and develop new talent.”

The Open Rights Group, who noted that the interests of Internet users and the general public were absent from today’s ruling, said that site censorship is not the solution to the issue of piracy.

“Blocking is an extreme response, which will encourage new forms of distributed infringement. The BPI and others should be mindful that their tactics may have the opposite effect to their intention, by legitimizing and promoting resistance to their actions,” said ORG’s Jim Killock.

“We are concerned that these orders are not protecting speech, are overblocking forums and discussion, and are prone to error as the actual block lists are private.”

The UK Pirate Party, who were recently forced by the BPI to close down their Pirate Bay proxy service, said that the UK had “handed power over what we see on the internet to corporate lobbyists.”

Speaking with TorrentFreak at the weekend, the owner of H33T described the BPI as “dishonest, capitalism at its most cynical,” and predicted that this blocking demand won’t be the last.

“We can expect this and more evil from the BPI, who are still rich on the wealth plundered over decades from exploited artists,” he said.

New information suggests that this prediction may indeed prove to be accurate.

Earlier this month we reported that RLSlog, one of the web’s largest ‘release blog’ sites, had withdrawn links to movies following threats from Hollywood. We have since learned that the law firm handling the case for the studios told RLSlog that they had already reported the site to the High Court with a view to having it blocked by the country’s largest ISPs.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Do you know a relatively unknown public BitTorrent site that should be in this list? Put it in the comments.

01. torrentvalley.com

02. yotoshi.com

03. extratorrent.com

04. bitenova.nl

05. torrentscan.com

06. fenopy.com

07. smaragdtorrent.org

08. torrentat.org

09. fulldls.com

10. worldnova.org

11. spynova.org

12. nova9.org

13. 2torrents.com

14. scrapetorrent.com

15. litebay.org

16. monova.org

17. torrents.to

18. torrentradar.org

19. bitdig.com

20. bittorrentshare.com

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

John from Searching Unlimited LTD, one of the masterminds behind the project told TorrentFreak that he is happy that he was able to bring these brilliant people together and recruit some of the web’s most gifted engineers.

Although the sites are sold to Searching Unlimited LTD, the site owners stay in charge of daily operation.

John Gotts explained:

All BitTorrent admins who sell their site will own a part of Searching Unlimited LTD, the parent company. However, they all will continue to own and operate the site they sell us. Additionally they will get pay and advertising revenue share of both their old company and any new projects they help create or support.

Gotts added that the great thing about this initiative is the brain trust that they are creating at Searching. “It’s a family of companies, and the huge amount of traffic we generate, together with the genius people who are involved, make it a very powerful family”.

BitTorrent sites make up for a significant portion of the total Web traffic. Teaming up all these high traffic BitTorrent sites (combined with their other projects) will instantly make them a big and powerful player on the online advertising market.

Stay tuned!

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

The site owner wrote the RIAJ a detailed description of how BitTorrent actually works, that they have no control over the content that’s added, and that the files are not hosted on their servers.

The admin told the RIAJ that he was wiling to cooperate, and take down the torrents in question. Most other BitTorrent sites have a similar policy, and take down torrents if they’re asked to by the copyright holders.

Surprisingly enough the RIAJ was very pleased with the response from fenopy’s admin. The RIAJ thanked the admin for his swift and polite response, and said it was all good.

The RIAJ even told the admin that they were “friends” now, and that they would contact the him directly in the future, instead of sending threat mails to their ISP.

They all lived happily ever after.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Fenopy is constantly looking for features that may enhance the “user experience”, and usability of the site. Last month they implemented their “share on your blog” feature, a visually attractive way for bloggers to share torrents, without running a tracker.

TyrantBuilt, the developer of the widget told TorrentFreak that he will release updated versions on a weekly basis. He even offered to make a TorrentFreak widget for the latest articles, pretty cool.

Fenopy Widget (Macupdate)

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

* How to get BitTorrent working in Itunes

* I steal TV because I have to!

* Fenopy, the Ajax Torrent Search Engine

* Secret Cinema & Camera Obscura (private), for the cult and arthouse movie junks

* RIAA bandwidth leeching

* BitTorrent & TV at macworld

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.